The past week saw quite a few developments in the telecom
sector. In a bid to win over Clearwire's remaining shareholders,
Sprint (
S
) improved upon its earlier $3 per share bid by 14% in a final
offer that also exceeds Dish's competing bid. Verizon (
VZ
) continued to march ahead of rivals in LTE coverage, adding its
497th LTE market this week and announcing the completion of almost
95% of its initial LTE network. AT&T (
T
) informed its subscribers that their monthly bills will now
include a 61 cent monthly administrative charge - a
'below-the-line' charge that allows the carrier to improve its
top-line without increasing the widely marketed monthly service
fees.

Sprint

Sprint raised its bid for Clearwire Tuesday in a last-ditch
attempt to win over the company's remaining shareholders who have
been clamoring for a better deal. The improved bid stands
at $3.40 per share, beating Dish Network's competing bid of $3.30
per share offered in January. Sprint said that the sweetened offer
was its 'best and final' one, implying that it isn't willing to
enter into a protracted bidding war to acquire the remaining nearly
50% of Clearwire that it doesn't already own.

Some of Clearwire's shareholders such as Crest Financial, who
were displeased with the earlier bid, weren't too impressed with
the new one either. However, with majority shareholder Sprint
unlikely to vote in favor of any counter-bid for Clearwire, this
may be the last chance for the company's minority shareholders to
salvage a deal before an imminent bankruptcy filing in the coming
months.

Clearwire filing for bankruptcy protection wouldn't be in
Sprint's favor either since the former's spectrum assets would then
have to be auctioned off to pay the debtors before the
shareholders. Sprint's majority stake-holding would then count
for zilch, and it would have to fight with other deep-pocketed
rivals such as Verizon and AT&T for Clearwire's spectrum,
making it even more expensive for the third-placed carrier. And it
is the spectrum that Sprint is after with its Clearwire acquisition
bid. In the top 100 markets in the U.S., Clearwire has around
160 MHz of spectrum on average, which would go a long way in
bolstering Sprint's LTE network. Moreover, the two companies
already have a deal in place, according to which Sprint will be
able to offload 4G LTE traffic onto Clearwire's planned TD-LTE
network. (see
Sprint Raises Its Clearwire Bid In Final Offer As
Bankruptcy Looms
)

Verizon

Despite enjoying a commanding lead over rivals in the 4G LTE
deployment arena, Verizon isn't letting off the
figurative gas pedal anytime soon. The largest wireless carrier in
the U.S. recently added six new markets to its ever growing LTE
coverage, taking the tally to 497 LTE markets which is almost 95%
of its existing 3G footprint. This keeps it on track to complete
the initial nationwide LTE deployment by the middle of the year -
a full two quarters ahead of what the company had initially
expected. After the end of the second quarter, Verizon will begin
its second round of LTE deployment which will see capacity
additions to existing markets through the use of small cells and
the deployment of AWS spectrum which it acquired from the
cable companies last year.

While Verizon is nearing the end of its initial LTE deployment
phase, closest rival AT&T isn't expected to reach the
same milestone before the end of 2o14. AT&T's LTE network is
currently available in about 210 U.S. markets, and will cover
about 270 million Americans by the end of this
year. Sprint is way behind with its LTE coverage in all
of 88 markets across the U.S. as compared to AT&T's 209 and
Verizon's 497. With 4G LTE expected to dominate the wireless scene
in the years to come, Verizon has done really well to earn this
early lead by executing well on its network transition plans. As a
result, the company has been exceeding expectations in recent
quarters, adding a disproportionate number of subscribers at the
expense of rivals. (see
Verizon's Dominant LTE Lead Draws New Customers In
A Saturated Market
)

AT&T

With subscriber growth stalling in a saturated wireless
market, AT&T is looking to drive top-line growth
through higher subscriber fees. The carrier recently announced the
addition of a new monthly administrative fee of 61 cents to
the bills of all its postpaid contract lines, effective May 1st.
The fee will be charged 'below-the-line', or separate from the
monthly service fees that usually appear at the beginning of the
phone bill, and be levied on top of the 50 cents per line
regulatory cost recovery charge that AT&T already charges.
Other carriers such as Verizon and Sprint have
already been charging fees under the same heads for quite some time
now. AT&T said that the new fee will help it cover the costs of
interconnection, cell site rents and maintenance.

While the fee of 61 cents per month ($7.32 per year) may not
sound like a lot to an individual subscriber, it adds up to a
significant amount for AT&T. With about 70 million postpaid
subscribers registered on its network as of Q1 2013, AT&T could
generate additional revenues of more than $500 million annually
assuming that it doesn't add any more subscribers from hereon.
Adjusted for the divestiture of the Yellow Pages business last
year, the additional charge could contribute to around 0.3% growth
in revenues this year. The carrier had guided for a 2% growth in
top-line for the full year 2013, but adjusted revenues grew only
0.9% in the first quarter. It seems as though the measure to levy
an additional fee was taken to counter the effect of the saturated
wireless market and the lower regulatory fees that the carrier had
collected last quarter.